Shasta County Courthouse will be bustling with trials

A long line of people wait to enter Shasta County Superior Court on Wednesday morning as a high-profile trial began with jury selection.

A long line of people queued up outside the Shasta County Courthouse early Wednesday morning inching their way toward the weapon screening station inside the door.

Many of the unusually large throng were on their way to the jury assembly room in preparation for a high-profile trial about to get underway.

It was a busy morning, but it's going to even busier next week as two other big trials start.

Albert Anthony Smith, whose trial began Wednesday, is charged with 10 felony counts of attempted murder and other charges in connection with a 2011 shootout with law enforcement officers.

Smith, 44, of Central Point, Ore., was arrested following an Oct. 27, 2011, shootout with officers on Interstate 5 near Castella that closed the freeway for several hours after a vehicle pursuit from the Oregon border.

Smith was shot and wounded at least three times by sheriff's deputies and California Highway Patrol officers after he allegedly fired an assault rifle at them.

But his attorneys are disputing the circumstances surrounding the shooting, saying officers opened fire on Smith after a CHP officer accidentally shot out the window of his own vehicle.

Next week should see a lot more prospective jurors arrive at the courthouse as defendant James Stanley Koenig's long-awaited Ponzi scheme trial is slated to begin with jury selection.

The murder retrial of Vanessa Kay Williamson is also slated to start next week and about 4,000 juror summons have been issued for those two trials.

Williams, 27, who is accused of murder in the 2010 death of a Sacramento man, was tried last year, but a Shasta County jury fell one vote shy of convicting her of murdering Daniel Ravnesh Khelawan, 28, setting the stage for her retrial.

Meanwhile, Koenig, 60, is accused of masterminding and orchestrating a multimillion-dollar Ponzi scheme.